First Fire of the season

In the fire place that is. Tuesday night after Dylans game it was so cold that when we got home Todd started a fire while I fixed dinner and gave the kids a bath.

Here are all 3 kids huddled by the fire after getting out of the bath. You can just barely see them. Now Emily wants to have a fire every night!

The birds and the bees

So what is a good age to talk to your children about the birds and the bees? I am not sure, but don't think I am ready to talk to any of my kids yet. Well JT might know more than I think already or then again maybe not. He has his pet rabbit Tyler who he loves so at school he checks out every book he can find on rabbits. Well most of them have a section on mating them. He knows mating means they end up with babies and he knows that you have to have a boy and a girl, not sure if he know much more than that (I hope not). Anyways... this past Sunday a friend of his was coming over and he wanted to bring his pet rabbit Daisy so the rabbits could have a playdate. I said as long as his parents knew our rabbit was a boy and his was a girl and they didn't care. They said ok. So here are some pictures of Tyler (our rabbit the grey one) and their rabbit Daisy (the black and white one).

The boys put them in our yard pen together and when I walked outside they said Tyler keeps trying to get on top of Daisy. I said if you see that knock him off, they said why? I said because they are trying to make babies and both of the boys looked at me and said we want them to. These crazy boys think they will be uncles if their rabbits have babies together. Kind of funny. They got bored with it and ended up going off and playing so we may (or JT's friend I should say) may be having baby rabbits soon.

Farewell Oreo!

Well you may remember awhile back that my nephew Hank had a pig he was raising for FFA. Well today was the show and he no longer has a pig. I went up there today to watch him show and say farewell to Oreo! Hank did great and came in 5th place for his weight class. Here are some pictures from the show this morning.

Here is Oreo:


This is my sister pinning Hanks number on him:
Here he comes walking through the gate to the show floor:
Here he is walking his pig:

After all classes were shown, he got to come back out this time for him in showmanship. He did great even with all the chaos of some of the pigs fighting (it was very exciting at times, almost like watching UFC, but with pigs). He did great and we are very proud of him. It is kind of funny watching them show their animals as they are suppose to make eye contact with the judge as much as possible, but it kind of looks like they are staring him down, so it is fun to watch.

Here he is (without the hat this time). He is the second one from the left:

I know he put a lot of hard work into this and we are so proud of him. I know it must be a relief for this to be over with.

Happy Birthday Mimi!!!

Just wanted to tell my mother in law Happy Birthday!!! Sorry it is a little late (her birthday was on October 23), but hope you had a wonderful day!

Tori's volleyball

Last weekend my niece Tori played in a volleyball tournament. I finally got to see her play Friday night. Her regular games are on Thursday and we have soccer and baseball on Thursdays so I haven't seen any of her games until Friday. She played so good as did her team. They won Friday night and then won their first game Saturday morning and lost the second one so they ended up 2nd place. Very good I think. Here are some of the pictures I took. I couldn't get very good ones so they are a little blurry, but she is number 3.

The weekend of October 11 and 12 JT got invited to a girl from his class skating birthday party. I don't know much about 8 year old little girls so we just got her a gift card so I had these little lunch box like tins so I decorated it to match the card I made and then stuck the gift card in the tin. I had fun making it and hope she liked it.

While at the party JT finally mastered skating backwards on his roller blades. Here he is on the left of this picture in the blue striped shirt.

This week is busy as usual, but next week/weekend is going to be plain crazy around here so if you don't here from me for awhile you know why. Have a blessed rest of the week!

Fall ball

I always have said I wouldn't let the kids play more than one sport per season, but JT was asked last spring to join a select baseball team which pretty much plays year round, so we allowed him to play that and other sports too. Well a few weeks ago a friend of ours asked if Dylan could join her sons select baseball team at least for the next few weeks. So we agreed, here is Dylan getting ready for a game:

Well before Dylan was asked to play on the select team he begged us to let him play fall ball. Well he is already playing soccer so I didn't really want to, but he loves baseball and was moving up from tball to pee wee this year so we gave in and let him play. Here are some pictures from his first game:

Well once we caved and let Dylan play we went ahead and let JT play fall ball too because he was moving up from pee wee to minors. Here are some pictures from his second game:
Of course when the coach asked if anyone wanted to try to catch, JT said he wanted to try so towards the end of the game he put JT in as a catcher. He did pretty good:

So yes, I am crazy and running around like a mad women trying to get 3 kids to soccer twice a week plus games on Saturday, plus fall ball for 2 boys with one practice and one game a week, plus both boys have practice with their select teams and sometimes games or tournaments with that so, no we are never home which is why I said I would never let this happen. How did I let this happen? I have sucker written on my forehead and my kids know it, but they are happy and having a ball so that is what matters most, so you might not here much from me until December when things slow down (I hope)!

Dewberry Farm

So Saturday evening after the kids soccer games we went to Dewberry Farm. Some good friends of ours went with us with their two kids and then one of JT and Justin's friends from soccer went with us as well. We didn't get there until about 5:00 that evening, but still had lots of fun. Here are some of my favorite pictures from there:
Look at JT as the sheep, looks like he is saying Baaa he didn't even know he was in the sheep:

Poor Emily, the only girl: Here are the kids at the beginning of the cornfield maze:

This is kind of the half way point of the maze:

The boys on the hayride:

This is my favorite one of my boys, they are so funny:

We did so much more, but it got dark on us fast so the rest of the pictures aren't very good. The kids had a blast on the flinger. If you ever have a chance to go, I recommend you take the family for a fun day!

GOOOAAAALLLLL

Ok, just one more post tonight. The kids soccer season is in full swing. They are all doing so well, I thought I would share a few of my favorite photos from this past Saturdays game.
Dylan and Emily's team tied their game they are undefeated with this one tie and JT's team won their game, so far they have only lost one game since regular season. They have come a long way. Here is Dylan with an almost midfield kick that scored a goal:


This is Emily on a throw in:

Here is Emily dribbling down the field. She has gotten more aggressive this year:
Here is Dylan on a goal kick:
This year JT's division has gone to all boys and this is the first year they have played with goalies. Of course my child wants to be a goalie and has done a great job so far. He loves it, it makes me a nervous wreck. Here he is getting on the ball to make a save:

This is one of my favorite photos from this past weekend. It was a great save, but the look on JT's face is so funny!

We have 3 games this weekend, Dylan and Emily's team play Saturday and Sunday this week and JT's team plays Saturday so it will be another fun filled soccer weekend for us. Hope all of yalls weekend is fun as well!

Tori's cheer and homecoming

It has been crazy busy around here lately. I have tons to share, but just going to do this one post for tonight as I am tired. Hope to get some other ones on here soon. Last Saturday it was my niece Tori's homecoming for the football that she cheers and does drill team for. I got up and went to go watch her before we had to get to the soccer games. Here are a few pictures, they did a different routine than what I had seen before, and I really liked this one. Here she is the second from the right:

This is her with her mum:

This is her with one of her friends:

They are getting ready for competition so keep them in your prayers that they will do good!

Homecoming and fishfest

Now that Ike is gone and we are recovering things are getting back to "normal" around here. Or in other words "busy". It is homecoming at the high school this weekend so at all the schools around here they sold ribbons and the kids wore them to school to support the local team. Here are my kids Friday morning ready for another exciting day of school.



Then Saturday the kids got back on schedule with soccer. They all had a game this morning (but I forgot my camera so no pictures). Well later on this afternoon one of JT's friends wanted us to come to the city pool for the annual fishfest. They take the city pool and dump a bunch of fish in it and tint the water so you can't see and they allow you to fish in it and keep whatever you catch (it is catfish). Well his friend had gone earlier that morning and caught like 20 fish, but when it got hot they stopped catching so they waited til it cooled off to go back and we went with them, but didn't catch anything. We ran into some other friends while we were there, but no one caught one fish. We still had fun though.

This picture was taken by Dylan, I was trying to get his line straightened back out when he picked up the camera and snapped this one. My kids love taking pictures almost as much as I do!

Tomorrow JT has another soccer game so if I remember the camera I will try to share those pictures later. Hope everyone else is returning to a "normal not so busy" schedule around here! Have a wonderful rest of the weekend!